Hyaluronic acid modified daunorubicin plus honokiol cationic liposomes for the treatment of breast cancer along with the elimination vasculogenic mimicry channels

Abstract

Background: Breast cancer is an alarming global public health problem and a main cause of cancer-related death in women. Systemic chemotherapy is the most widely used treatment for breast cancer. However, current chemotherapy treatments are far from desirable due to poor targeting specificity, severe side effects and vasculogenic mimicry (VM).

Purpose: Hyaluronic acid (HA)-modified daunorubicin plus honokiol (HNK) cationic liposomes were prepared and characterised for treatment of breast cancer by eliminating VM.

Methods: HA-modified daunorubicin plus HNK cationic liposomes were prepared by a thin-film hydration method. Evaluations were performed on MCF-7 cells and MDA-MB-435S cells, which are human breast cancer cells, and xenografts of MDA-MB-435S cells.

Results: In vitro results revealed that the HA-modified daunorubicin plus HNK cationic liposomes enhanced the cellular uptake and destroyed VM channels. In vivo results demonstrated that the liposomes prolonged the circulation time in the blood, obviously accumulated in the tumour region, and enhanced the overall anticancer effects. Action mechanisms were related to down-regulation of VM protein indicators including FAK, EphA2, MMP-2 and MMP-9.

Conclusions: The prepared HA-modified daunorubicin plus HNK cationic liposomes may serve as a promising therapeutic strategy for the treatment of breast cancer.

Keywords:

• Daunorubicin
• honokiol
• hyaluronic acid
• vasculogenic mimicry
• cationic liposomes

Disclosure statement

There are no conflicts of interest regarding this work.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

We would like to acknowledge the support of this work by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 81673603, 81703453 and 81541081) and the Outstanding Talent Training Foundation of Beijing Municipality (Grant No. 2016000020124G058).